


Think of Me

by GretchenSinister



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Amnesia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:21:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23088475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "The Fearlings and Nightmares and Shadows and All the Dark Things have decided that Pitch is no longer an effective agent of fear anymore, so they decide to peace out and inhabit the body of one of the Guardians. (I was thinking Sandy, North, or Jack, but anyone would do.) While the other Guardians fight to protect/free their friend, an insane, traumatized, amnesiac General Pitchiner is left to wander the planet.BONUSES:++The Guardians are able to restore the Fearlings to Pitch’s mind, restoring him to his “lovable”, sassy self.++The Fearlings try to hunt down and kill Pitchiner to prevent them from being transferred back (or something).++The only thing General Pitchiner remembers is his daughter, so he just calls out for her.++The only Guardian who knew about Pitch’s past life was the one who got possessed by the Fearlings, so no one has any idea who this rambling spirit who looks like Pitch is."As he’s getting attacked by fearlings, Sandy sees a figure on the road below him that he recognizes.On a rainy night, three teenagers almost hit a man wandering in the road.A nurse gets her first hospital ghost story.
Relationships: Pitch Black/Sanderson Mansnoozie
Kudos: 8
Collections: Blacksand Short Fics





	Think of Me

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 9/20/2013.

When the shadows came for him, Sandy had been watching for their leader. By the time he realized he should have been using a mirror, it was too late. He did not cry out for help. He didn’t know if he even could, anymore, and the only one who would have heard was a solitary man far below, walking along the rural highway. Before turning inward upon himself, he glimpsed the man glancing anxiously up at the gathering storm clouds, pulling his thin robe more closely around his body. And Sandy recognized him—but all for naught, as he soon had far more pressing matters to attend to. He had escaped the shadows before—now it was time to keep them from escaping him.  
  


* * *

  
  
“Oh my God that’s a person and they’re not getting out of the way!” Caleb yelled from the passenger seat. In the back, Claude scrambled for his seat belt.  
  
“Oh shit oh shit oh shit,” Jamie muttered. He slammed his foot down on the brake pedal, thankful that they hadn’t been travelling at speed, though the reason he had been driving slowly—the torrential rain that reduced visibility to near-zero—quickly complicated things. _Hydroplaning_. The word flashed into his mind in the nasal voice of Mr. Barnes, his excruciatingly dull driver’s ed teacher, while the car began to slowly drift, back end first, into the opposite lane. He couldn’t remember what Mr. Barnes had said about how to turn the steering wheel in this situation. He gritted his teeth and kept his foot on the brake while the car continued to spin, hoping and praying to anyone who might hear that he didn’t hit the person on the road, who he had glimpsed as a thin, dark, figure.  
  
When the car finally stopped, it cut across both lanes of the highway diagonally, pointed mostly in the wrong direction down the way from which they had just come. The headlights picked out the shape of a person through the gray wall of water, hunched over miserably.   
  
Jamie sighed and slumped back against his headrest. “We didn’t hit him. We didn’t hit him.”  
  
“Yeah, but what’s he doing out here? It’s miles to anywhere,” Claude pointed out.  
  
“Maybe he’s a psycho-killer hitchhiker!” Caleb said, his voice shaky with adrenaline.  
  
“I’m going to go out and see.” Claude pulled his jacket over his head and jumped out of the car. As Jamie expected, Caleb quickly began to follow him.  
  
“I’ll get the car facing the right direction, okay?”  
  
Caleb nodded, and then he was trotting over towards his brother and the figure as well.  
  
They returned with the figure between them. “Jamie, we’ve got to take him to the hospital or something,” Caleb said, while Claude helped him into the back seat. “He’s got, like, amnesia. And all he’s got on is pajamas.”  
  
Jamie turned around to look at their new passenger. He was soaking wet, shivering, thin as a rail with wide, frightened eyes in a narrow, haggard face crowned with messy black hair. He hugged a black robe around himself and made no move to buckle up. Even sitting down, it was clear that he was very tall. “Th-thank you,” he said quietly, once they were all in the car. “I don’t know what I would have done…I don’t know…anything really.”  
  
“Well…we couldn’t just leave you there,” Jamie said. He glanced at Claude, then Caleb. Claude shook his head and Caleb shrugged. Jamie frowned and shifted to drive, slowly heading back to Burgess in silence with his friends and someone he shouldn’t have recognized. Someone he was going to tell his other friends about.

* * *

  
  
As she continued her rounds for the evening, Allison couldn’t help but dwell on one of the patients she had seen earlier. Apart from his malnourished appearance, she hadn’t found anything physically wrong with him that couldn’t be explained by a couple hours out in a storm. But she had seen tears in his eyes after she checked his pulse and blood pressure. “Sorry,” he had said. “I don’t think I’m used to being touched. I don’t know.”  
  
There had been no signs of a recent head injury. Allison hoped he wouldn’t be surprised to find himself in a hospital tomorrow morning.  
  
Well, whether he was or not, he clearly needed help. There was something terribly neglected about him—in the way he eagerly ate the mediocre hospital food, in the way he wrapped himself tightly in the blankets on the hospital bed, in the way he had smiled with astonishment when Allison had offered to get him more, without him having to ask.  
  
And then, when she had left the room—“Nurse, is it all right if I leave the light on all night?”  
  
She wondered what could make a grown man afraid of the dark for all the rest of her shift and during her ride home in the early hours of the morning, which had always seemed so peaceful, so unpopulated, before now.

* * *

  
  
The next day, the patient hadn’t been surprised to find himself in a hospital, which was a good sign.   
  
Still, the only name he could give anyone was “Kozmotis Pitchiner”, which didn’t show up in any databases.  
  
“Look, sir, could you try to remember another name? Kozmotis Pitchiner doesn’t exist.”  
  
At this, he had clenched his hands in the blankets, his knuckles going white. “But you can see me right in front of you!”  
  


* * *

  
  
That night he woke, or thought he woke, to a sound like a fluttering of wings. “This is cruel, isn’t it?” A woman’s voice. “Aren’t you in control now? Why do we need him?” A pause. “Oh. But he didn’t know that before, did he? And the fragments in the tooth…” A longer pause. “I never thought of it that way. But if you just give him nightmares back…you won’t.” Pause. “Half and half. And then what? You’ll be the same?”  
  
Thoughts began to bloom in his mind like morning glories. _Always have been. Don’t worry. I’ll help him. You’ve always known I tried. Now I can. Trust me. Don’t want to lose Kozmotis. You know this way he’d be gone in an instant. Trying to live in this world would kill him_.  
  
“All right.” He heard the woman’s voice again and felt something slide under his pillow, and he thought he wanted to call the nurse, but in moments he had fallen into dreams, such strange, strange dreams.  
  


* * *

  
  
It’s difficult to report someone missing who doesn’t ever seem to have been found in the first place, though the hospital tries. After that, it tries to forget. Allison doesn’t. Sometimes she’s glad that her hospital ghost story isn’t one of the normal ones. She thinks about him often, can picture him so clearly. Odd things bring him to mind. Orange fall moons, gold jewelry, black-and-white photos of dead soldiers.  
  
Once, as she was getting into bed, she thought she felt something brush against her ankle, and that made her think of him too. The touch felt like thanks, and she didn’t know why, but she was glad.  
  
That night she dreamed of ruined cities rebuilt for play.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments from Tumblr:
> 
> bowlingforgerbils said: This was so beautiful.
> 
> whentheoceanmetsky said: I had a sad. :‘c That was a surprisingly cute ending though.


End file.
